The portrait of a lady, on page 300, is the work of that very gifted portrait painter, Fräulein Maria Davids. This capable artist has produced some excellent likenesses; among others those of the poet Gustav Frenssen, of Professor Weber, of Freiburg, of Fräulein von Sydow, a daughter of the Minister of State, and of Frau Vermehren of Lübeck. Another portrait painter of fame and much power of expression, is Frau Vilma Parlaghy, her draughtsmanship being particularly good. Hungarian by birth, she lives and works for the most part in the German capital. Her handling of the brush is vigorous, yet sober, her colouring is warm and harmoniously balanced, and her insight into character quite strikingly true and convincing. The finest and most successful efforts, in my opinion, are the portrait of the aged Field-marshal Count von Moltke, taken in his eighty-ninth year, shortly before his death, and that of Windhorst, the German statesman. In Austria, in the dominions of the Emperor Francis Joseph, women painters are numerous, but those of more than average gifts are not perhaps so plentiful as elsewhere. In the Bohemian capital of Prague, Fräulein Hermine Laucota has worked her way up to a position of distinction quite on her own grounds. Leading a most retired life, devoted chiefly to the pursuit of natural history and art, she studied first in Prague, and then partly at Antwerp and in Munich, but since the year 1888 she has resided altogether in her native town. It is not in colours so much as in etching on the copper plate that she has found her medium of artistic expression, and the subjects she has chosen are for the most part of a symbolical character, as in the distinguished etching on page 307. To come to Vienna, a couple of names of good repute occur to me: Frau Olga Wisinger-Florian and Frau Tina Blau-Lang, the latter a refined landscapist (see pages 306 and 308). The two views of the Prater will speak for themselves. With their charming freshness and their genial breadth of handling, they tell us as plain as words that "all's right with the world" in the springtime. Every touch is so bracing that it needs no praise. Frau Blau-Lang is an optimist beyond a doubt, and that as much by temperament as by choice of motive.